Assets, Bitcoin

Does Ross Ulbricht Still Have Bitcoin?

On May 31, 2019, a U.S.

federal judge ruled that Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the Silk Road online drug marketplace, must forfeit nearly $50 million in Bitcoin and other assets to the government. The ruling comes more than five years after Ulbricht was arrested and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The $50 million forfeiture is the largest ever imposed in a criminal case, and it represents only a fraction of the total amount of Bitcoin that was seized from Silk Road by the FBI when the site was shut down in 2013. At today’s prices, those Bitcoins would be worth more than $700 million.

While Ulbricht no longer has control over his Silk Road-era Bitcoin stash, it’s unclear what happened to the rest of his BTC holdings. In a 2017 interview with Motherboard, Ulbricht’s mother Lyn said her son had “a few hundred thousand” dollars worth of Bitcoin when he was first arrested, but she claimed she didn’t know what happened to it after that.

NOTE: WARNING: This article discusses Ross Ulbricht, a convicted felon who is serving two life sentences for his involvement in the Silk Road online black market. It also discusses Bitcoin and related topics. Please exercise caution when researching this topic or discussing it with others, as the discussion of any criminal activity is potentially illegal. Additionally, this article does not provide investment advice and should not be taken as such.

It’s possible that Ulbricht spent some of his Bitcoin while he was in prison; Motherboard reported in 2016 that he had used the messaging app WhatsApp to ask a friend to buy him an ice cream cone with BTC. But it seems likely that much of Ulbricht’s Bitcoin is still sitting in wallets that only he can access.

So does Ross Ulbricht still have Bitcoin? It’s hard to say for sure, but it seems likely that he does—and that he may be sitting on a fortune that continues to grow larger as the price of Bitcoin rises.

Ross Ulbricht does not have access to his bitcoin anymore due to it being seized by the FBI when they shut down Silk Road. However, it is possible that he still has some bitcoin stored in wallets that only he can access.

While we cannot know for sure how much bitcoin Ross Ulbricht has, it is safe to say that he may be sitting on a fortune as the price of bitcoin continues to rise.

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